Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sixty per cent of active Canadian voters rejected Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Yet there he is, managing Canada.The “60 percenters” can modify Harper’s hidden agenda, which is in plain sight. Job No. 1 for Harper is weakening the power of parliamentary government while strengthening the prime minister’s power to command and control and slashing social programs. He is aiming at the weak-government target just as steadily now as he did when he was a leader of the far-right-wing Reform and Alliance. He tried to kill a national campaign for cheaper and more readily obtainable medicines. Stopping federal work on a national pharmaceutical strategy (NPS) was one of Harper’s moves as a minority prime minister. Luckily for patients who need medicines, the provinces met in August 2010 and went ahead on their own with planning. They created a flexible new federation, overlying the rigid, rusted-up federal structure. Even without Ottawa’s participation, NPS seems tricky but achievable. What will it take to persuade Harper to offer co-ordination and startup money?Encouragement by the NDP opposition might do it. National pharmacare, including reduced prices through mass purchasing, might save $10 billion a year, the NPS draft documents suggest.Harper wants weaker government and cheaper social programs. Jack Layton wants to make public health care increasingly efficient and sensitive.

This particular conflict could be diplomatically settled, but the policy gulf between Harperism and the majority of Canadians remains wide and deep. Majority opinion favours public health care, and mainstream expert analysis shows how public care can be upgraded; but Harper continues to trash popular and scholarly input and encourage provinces to privatize. So how did a parliamentary majority of Conservatives get elected? Mainly because of Harper’s clever electioneering, with its false “trust me” message implying that Conservative management kept Canada’s banks and economy safe from U.S.-style panic. In fact Canada’s greater financial stability was determined long ago by stricter regulation, a policy that runs counter to Harper’s “free market” preference.